Jamie Stewart's Blog
March 31, 2022
Books That Shine: Rage
Nope!! That’s my thought on finishing this novel, just nope.
Rage is a novel about high school student Charlie Decker murdering a teacher and holding his classmate’s hostage. While the police try to negotiate with Charlie, he turns his classmates into a group therapy session about his woes. It’s a heavy premise, and unfortunately, it’s not well executed, partly because the bile that Charlie spills out is difficult to stomach.
It’s also an early work of King, while Rage was released after his first three novels research shows that it may be his first effort at writing a novel. This is slightly confused as other sources state The Long Walk is, but the style of writing in this feels much rougher. It’s this roughness that I struggled with mostly and has led me to coin the phase Headache Book, on account of actually getting a headache reading some of its passages.
Charlie’s opinions ooze from the sentences of this book like poisonous sulphur, to the point where this reader felt like King was on the side of Charlie. Rage is notorious for having been remove from publication following the discovery of copies in several school shooters lockers. While I agree with this choice it has led to the book taking on mystically kind of significance in the minds of die-hard fans. I wasn’t able to find a copy it until I stumbled across it in a charity book store at twenty-nine. I wonder sometimes if the same fans that revere this book associate its rarity with high quality. They shouldn’t, and really should only seek it to complete reading all his work, not for the content.
Rating: One Star
Tier: Headache Books
Companion Books: We Need To Talk About Kevin
Both novels deal with heinous acts of violence committed at high schools only We Need To Talk About Kevin tells its story well. Yes, both are horrifying, but the latter does not leave the reader feel like inflicted with a migraine.
Rage is a novel about high school student Charlie Decker murdering a teacher and holding his classmate’s hostage. While the police try to negotiate with Charlie, he turns his classmates into a group therapy session about his woes. It’s a heavy premise, and unfortunately, it’s not well executed, partly because the bile that Charlie spills out is difficult to stomach.
It’s also an early work of King, while Rage was released after his first three novels research shows that it may be his first effort at writing a novel. This is slightly confused as other sources state The Long Walk is, but the style of writing in this feels much rougher. It’s this roughness that I struggled with mostly and has led me to coin the phase Headache Book, on account of actually getting a headache reading some of its passages.
Charlie’s opinions ooze from the sentences of this book like poisonous sulphur, to the point where this reader felt like King was on the side of Charlie. Rage is notorious for having been remove from publication following the discovery of copies in several school shooters lockers. While I agree with this choice it has led to the book taking on mystically kind of significance in the minds of die-hard fans. I wasn’t able to find a copy it until I stumbled across it in a charity book store at twenty-nine. I wonder sometimes if the same fans that revere this book associate its rarity with high quality. They shouldn’t, and really should only seek it to complete reading all his work, not for the content.
Rating: One Star
Tier: Headache Books
Companion Books: We Need To Talk About Kevin
Both novels deal with heinous acts of violence committed at high schools only We Need To Talk About Kevin tells its story well. Yes, both are horrifying, but the latter does not leave the reader feel like inflicted with a migraine.
February 11, 2022
Books That Shine: The Shining
This is the big one.
Without this book I wouldn’t be a reader and I probably would have stopped writing my own fiction years ago. To understand how important this book is, how utterly brilliant it is, how much you care for the characters in it and how much it physically grips you, you must understand I was not a reader before this book. I was too restless as a child to be reader. I wanted to be outside with my friends, not sat with my nose in a book. This book changed that, it changed me. That is now good it is, because it makes you care for the people in it, enough that you want to experience that again and you pick up another book and another trying to find that same experience.
Jack, Wendy, Danny and Dick are all fantastic characters that could hold a novel each of their own. Previously, Stephen King had published two novels, Carrie and Salem’s Lot, each one a masterpiece in their own way. Carrie is all about the horror of people’s actions. Salem’s Lot is all about the situation. The Shining is where the depth comes into King’s writing. And yet it achieves something else as well. It does not only make you care but it makes you think. Is the hotel really haunted or is it all in their heads? And that is why it is a masterpiece.
Rating: Five Stars
Tier: Books That Shine
Companion Books: Those You Killed by Christopher Babcock
Both The Shining and Those You Killed feature characters that have hit rock bottom, yet in Christopher Babcock’s debut novel, his protagonist, Elwood Cathis, must claw his way out without the support of his family. He’s alone, isolated, taking refuge in a lake side house in a place he’s never been before in a bid to beat the monkey on his back. His plan is to go cold turkey, his motivation his daughter and estranged wife.
That is until things take a sharp turn into a world of haunting weirdness. Now there’s a lot more at risk for Elwood than falling off the wagon, like his life.
Without this book I wouldn’t be a reader and I probably would have stopped writing my own fiction years ago. To understand how important this book is, how utterly brilliant it is, how much you care for the characters in it and how much it physically grips you, you must understand I was not a reader before this book. I was too restless as a child to be reader. I wanted to be outside with my friends, not sat with my nose in a book. This book changed that, it changed me. That is now good it is, because it makes you care for the people in it, enough that you want to experience that again and you pick up another book and another trying to find that same experience.
Jack, Wendy, Danny and Dick are all fantastic characters that could hold a novel each of their own. Previously, Stephen King had published two novels, Carrie and Salem’s Lot, each one a masterpiece in their own way. Carrie is all about the horror of people’s actions. Salem’s Lot is all about the situation. The Shining is where the depth comes into King’s writing. And yet it achieves something else as well. It does not only make you care but it makes you think. Is the hotel really haunted or is it all in their heads? And that is why it is a masterpiece.
Rating: Five Stars
Tier: Books That Shine
Companion Books: Those You Killed by Christopher Babcock
Both The Shining and Those You Killed feature characters that have hit rock bottom, yet in Christopher Babcock’s debut novel, his protagonist, Elwood Cathis, must claw his way out without the support of his family. He’s alone, isolated, taking refuge in a lake side house in a place he’s never been before in a bid to beat the monkey on his back. His plan is to go cold turkey, his motivation his daughter and estranged wife.
That is until things take a sharp turn into a world of haunting weirdness. Now there’s a lot more at risk for Elwood than falling off the wagon, like his life.
January 30, 2022
Charles L Grant: The Almost Forgotten Master of Suspense.
Let’s talk about Charles L. Grant. What? Never heard of him? That’s okay, I hadn’t either until two years ago when I accidentally stumbled upon his work having gone down a Google wormhole looking for my next favourite read.
So who is he? A newly published indie author making strides to break down barriers in the current horror scene while shunning bigger publishers that only seem interested in publishing sedate, middle of the road stories made by commission. Nope, Mr. Grant belongs to that bygone golden era of horror publication of the 70s and the 80s whenever everyone wanted horror. He was published alongside Stephen King, Robert R.McCammon, Lisa Turtle, Nancy A. Collins, Peter Straub and Elizabeth Engstrom to name a few and regarded highly by many of them. Yet, sadly Mr. Grant never makes it onto Goodreads or any best of lists for that time period. Nor are there many articles to be discovered concerning him, those that do exist seem light on information about the author and his work. You won’t find his paperbacks in books stores unless their second hand having gone out of print. Those second hand ones are available on Amazon, but only at ridiculous prices all.
It seems Mr. Grant is almost forgotten.
Personally, as a author myself, I find that to be the saddest thing. There is a saying that we live on as long as people remember us, if that’s true Mr. Grant’s days are numbered.
Why, is this important you may ask? You may ask what are you harping on about, if he’s forgotten surely that’s because his work wasn’t very good? Actually, that’s not the case at all. The stories of Charles L. Grant are fucking excellent!
Mr. Grant was a master of suspense, of gradually building pressure in the readers mind until the skin at the back of their neck tickles with anticipation and fear. He dealt in shadows, fogs and darkness, in worlds like ours, but somehow slightly off-kilter.
Take Oxrun Station for example, a fictional town that is the setting for many of his books. It’s something of a cross between King’s Derry and Lovecraft’s Innsmouth, only while readers get explanations from both authors as to why things in such places are weird Grant never does. His characters often remark that their is something buried in Oxrun Station’s fabric that makes it a spawning place for the horrible things that occur there, but they never uncover what, allowing for stories to continue.
There is a theory as to why he hasn’t lasted as long as those of his contemporaries and that’s because even in the 70s and 80s Grant’s horror did not represent the pulse of the time, that pulse being grotesquery and blood-letting. Even then Mr. Grant’s tales seem to come from a time before when the focus was on shadows and stirrings in the dark rather than being ripped open with a machete. He was old school, yet, only in where he chose to place his storytelling lens. Read The Hour of the Oxrun Dead, the first novel set in Oxrun Station, and you’ll surprised to discover how far ahead of his time Grant has in terms of depicting female protagonists. In fact, reading the novel now, where protagonist, Natalie, is besieged by the townships opinions that a woman of her age should be married, all of which she dismisses with the batting of a hand, believing that no person other than herself will define who she is. Powerful stuff for a book that was published in 1977, especially when every article or essay written about books from that time highlight the poor quality and stereotypical writing of female characters.
While I enjoy the gripped-by-the-throat sensation of a fast paced gruesome book I also enjoy the seduction of a slow burn, which is all Grant. He seduces like no other, turning a slow burn story into a compulsive, a feeling I had whenever I was reading his fantastic novel, The Pet. The Pet concerns a bullied teenager who suddenly finds he has protective, violent friends in interesting places. To read that book is to come under Grant’s spell, to feel like it isn’t a story your reading, but an enchanted thing that’s ever weaving and changing.
So let’s get this straight so far Mr. Grant’s stories are progressive, feature brilliant characterisation and seductive. He’s also skilled at the hooking opening line. Check this out, this is from The Soft Whisper of the Dead.
‘It was November, and the leaves on the ground stirred like rats in the sewer, the wind passing over them the breath of a dead season.’
That is the type of opening line any writer would murder their family to write!
What more could you want?
There is one more thing. If your a writer, or want to be: read Charles L. Grant. His stories will teach you more about suspense and tension than any other. If you are a writer: read Charles L. Grant and discover one of the greats that like his villains lurks in the shadows of horror history.
His books while hard and expensive to find physical copies of exist on Kindle and audiobook at affordable prices. This isn’t enough, with Paperbacks From Hell and other sources encouraging reprints of brilliant stories I hope someday someone takes it upon themselves to offer Grant’s work that opportunity.
In closing if your looking for your next favourite read pick up something from his Oxrun Station series. If your looking for short stories try Scream Quietly, a collection that contains a lot of his work. For novellas try Nightmare Seasons. Or if your looking for some old school horror dealing with the Universal monster archetypes try The Soft Whisper of the Dead, The Long Night of the Grave or The Dark Cry of the Moon.
Basically, Mr. Grant has you covered.
So who is he? A newly published indie author making strides to break down barriers in the current horror scene while shunning bigger publishers that only seem interested in publishing sedate, middle of the road stories made by commission. Nope, Mr. Grant belongs to that bygone golden era of horror publication of the 70s and the 80s whenever everyone wanted horror. He was published alongside Stephen King, Robert R.McCammon, Lisa Turtle, Nancy A. Collins, Peter Straub and Elizabeth Engstrom to name a few and regarded highly by many of them. Yet, sadly Mr. Grant never makes it onto Goodreads or any best of lists for that time period. Nor are there many articles to be discovered concerning him, those that do exist seem light on information about the author and his work. You won’t find his paperbacks in books stores unless their second hand having gone out of print. Those second hand ones are available on Amazon, but only at ridiculous prices all.
It seems Mr. Grant is almost forgotten.
Personally, as a author myself, I find that to be the saddest thing. There is a saying that we live on as long as people remember us, if that’s true Mr. Grant’s days are numbered.
Why, is this important you may ask? You may ask what are you harping on about, if he’s forgotten surely that’s because his work wasn’t very good? Actually, that’s not the case at all. The stories of Charles L. Grant are fucking excellent!
Mr. Grant was a master of suspense, of gradually building pressure in the readers mind until the skin at the back of their neck tickles with anticipation and fear. He dealt in shadows, fogs and darkness, in worlds like ours, but somehow slightly off-kilter.
Take Oxrun Station for example, a fictional town that is the setting for many of his books. It’s something of a cross between King’s Derry and Lovecraft’s Innsmouth, only while readers get explanations from both authors as to why things in such places are weird Grant never does. His characters often remark that their is something buried in Oxrun Station’s fabric that makes it a spawning place for the horrible things that occur there, but they never uncover what, allowing for stories to continue.
There is a theory as to why he hasn’t lasted as long as those of his contemporaries and that’s because even in the 70s and 80s Grant’s horror did not represent the pulse of the time, that pulse being grotesquery and blood-letting. Even then Mr. Grant’s tales seem to come from a time before when the focus was on shadows and stirrings in the dark rather than being ripped open with a machete. He was old school, yet, only in where he chose to place his storytelling lens. Read The Hour of the Oxrun Dead, the first novel set in Oxrun Station, and you’ll surprised to discover how far ahead of his time Grant has in terms of depicting female protagonists. In fact, reading the novel now, where protagonist, Natalie, is besieged by the townships opinions that a woman of her age should be married, all of which she dismisses with the batting of a hand, believing that no person other than herself will define who she is. Powerful stuff for a book that was published in 1977, especially when every article or essay written about books from that time highlight the poor quality and stereotypical writing of female characters.
While I enjoy the gripped-by-the-throat sensation of a fast paced gruesome book I also enjoy the seduction of a slow burn, which is all Grant. He seduces like no other, turning a slow burn story into a compulsive, a feeling I had whenever I was reading his fantastic novel, The Pet. The Pet concerns a bullied teenager who suddenly finds he has protective, violent friends in interesting places. To read that book is to come under Grant’s spell, to feel like it isn’t a story your reading, but an enchanted thing that’s ever weaving and changing.
So let’s get this straight so far Mr. Grant’s stories are progressive, feature brilliant characterisation and seductive. He’s also skilled at the hooking opening line. Check this out, this is from The Soft Whisper of the Dead.
‘It was November, and the leaves on the ground stirred like rats in the sewer, the wind passing over them the breath of a dead season.’
That is the type of opening line any writer would murder their family to write!
What more could you want?
There is one more thing. If your a writer, or want to be: read Charles L. Grant. His stories will teach you more about suspense and tension than any other. If you are a writer: read Charles L. Grant and discover one of the greats that like his villains lurks in the shadows of horror history.
His books while hard and expensive to find physical copies of exist on Kindle and audiobook at affordable prices. This isn’t enough, with Paperbacks From Hell and other sources encouraging reprints of brilliant stories I hope someday someone takes it upon themselves to offer Grant’s work that opportunity.
In closing if your looking for your next favourite read pick up something from his Oxrun Station series. If your looking for short stories try Scream Quietly, a collection that contains a lot of his work. For novellas try Nightmare Seasons. Or if your looking for some old school horror dealing with the Universal monster archetypes try The Soft Whisper of the Dead, The Long Night of the Grave or The Dark Cry of the Moon.
Basically, Mr. Grant has you covered.
January 27, 2022
Price Manor: The House That Bleeds
The world’s most horrifying day of the year is just around the corner: Valentine’s Day. To mark this special occasion, especially for fans that like a little more spooky in the their reading, I will be publishing Price Manor: The House That Bleeds on the 11th of February 2022. A book that focuses on the unsung side of romance, revenge. Yes, revenge for love that’s been lost.
It is also the second instalment in the Price Manor Series following on from Mike Salt’s incredible book The House That Burns, though you do not have to read it to understand my story. That’s one of the awesome things about this series! Each book is connected yet standalone.
Check out the synopsis of mine below:
Tula, 1883: a small farming community in some forgettable corner of Russia where the few in power hold on with a strangle-like grip, scheming in the shadows. Father Alexander Nicholai knows this best, his faith shattered by hate for those that have manipulated his life and the lives of those around him. Yet, despite this he has a duty - to protect Tula against forces outside of human comprehension.
When a mysterious house suddenly appears on the shores of Lake Silver, a house that shouldn’t be and that twenty-four hours prior did not exist, he finds himself called upon to battle the forces that lurk on the fringes of reality. Inside this bizarre building Alex uncovers revelations that make him question the very fabric of existence, revelations that if employed right might allow him to take revenge on those that he hates so vehemently.
Price Manor: The House That Bleeds is a haunted house story unlike any other, featuring a genre blending mix of gothic horror with modern sensibilities. Author Jamie Stewart says, ‘enter if you dare.’
Feel free to add it to you Want to Read list on Goodreads as it’s already available there.
It is also the second instalment in the Price Manor Series following on from Mike Salt’s incredible book The House That Burns, though you do not have to read it to understand my story. That’s one of the awesome things about this series! Each book is connected yet standalone.
Check out the synopsis of mine below:
Tula, 1883: a small farming community in some forgettable corner of Russia where the few in power hold on with a strangle-like grip, scheming in the shadows. Father Alexander Nicholai knows this best, his faith shattered by hate for those that have manipulated his life and the lives of those around him. Yet, despite this he has a duty - to protect Tula against forces outside of human comprehension.
When a mysterious house suddenly appears on the shores of Lake Silver, a house that shouldn’t be and that twenty-four hours prior did not exist, he finds himself called upon to battle the forces that lurk on the fringes of reality. Inside this bizarre building Alex uncovers revelations that make him question the very fabric of existence, revelations that if employed right might allow him to take revenge on those that he hates so vehemently.
Price Manor: The House That Bleeds is a haunted house story unlike any other, featuring a genre blending mix of gothic horror with modern sensibilities. Author Jamie Stewart says, ‘enter if you dare.’
Feel free to add it to you Want to Read list on Goodreads as it’s already available there.
January 25, 2022
Books That Shine: Salem's Lot
This was my fifth or sixth read of this novel.
I think that’s because within Salem’s Lot horrifying, gruesome pages are some of Stephen King’s most beautiful writing. The entire thing can be read and reread again to simply enjoy his words, especially when King is describing the changing seasons, he takes on a Ray Bradbury-like quality.
With the success of Carrie, King had the opportunity to show readers the full of extent of what he was capable of as a writer. Carrie is set in the fictional town of Chamberlain and while we learn a little about the town and its people it is nothing much in comparison with the in-depth experience of reading Salem’s Lot. Stephen King really creates an entire community in this book, utilizing his skills as a short story writer to flesh out that community by providing tiny stories about several of its inhabitants.
We get the story of an aged, crabby milkman, the man in charge of the town dump, a woman who runs the local boarding house, the town drunk or a couple having an affair to name a few. The thing is all these characters feature in the story in some significant way to show the horror as it progresses to take over the town. I found I enjoyed every moment spent in these characters’ lives, especially those of Eve and Weasel, an elderly on and off again couple.
The horror in this book comes in the form of Barlow and Straker, outsiders that move into Salem’s Lot’s most notorious residence the Marston House.
Barlow is a vampire and Straker is his familiar. As they arrive so does the novel’s protagonist Ben Mears, a writer who’s never had a home but for the few years, he spent in this town as a boy. Ben gets a lot of criticism as a character for being too noble and thus boring, but I never found that with him. I enjoyed every moment spent in his practical head as he meets his love interest Susan Norton and the rest of the cast. He is in some way’s King’s first attempt at making an interesting everyday man, something he would perfect with Johnny Smith a few books later.
While this is Stephen King’s first-time round at developing a lived-in community so is it his first attempt at building a team of characters intent on stopping a villain. You can see in these pages how King would go on the create such lengthy books as The Stand, which also features a huge cast of characters. However, those that feature in that book never feel as filled out or as enjoyable to read as those in this book. Matt Burke, a single elderly school teacher, stands out as the novel’s Van Helsing character, who is a personal favourite. Another is Jimmy Cody, the town’s local sawbones, whose end is heart-wrenching even after reading this book so many times. There’s also Father Callahan, who meets a fate worse than death, and Mark Petrie, probably the most resourceful of King’s child characters.
Barlow begins to infect the population of Salem’s Lot given the book a real sense of dread with each night that passes as the reader becomes aware that more people will have been converted into his soulless followers, especially in the book’s latter half.
The vampires in this book are clearly inspired by those in Dracula. Their abilities are more traditional than any modern incarnation, yet unlike those in Bram Stroker book where vampirism is a way for characters to fully unleash the pent-up emotions and desires, the vampires in King’s are more perverse. His vampires are ruthless, soulless leeches. They are an infection, something meant to be cleansed from your body. Combining this with King’s fantastic ability to create characters that the readers recognize and root for even if those characters are framed in the 1970s makes Salem’s Lot not just one of the best books in his catalogue but also the best book on vampires to ever be written.
Tier: Books That Shine
Rating: Five Stars
COMPANION STORY: DEVIL’S CREEK BY TODD KEISLING
Devil’s Creek is the modern-day equivalent of Salem’s Lot. There I typed it, it’s a hill I’m ready to die on. From its story about a small-town community in Kentucky scarred by its local legends to its diverse cast of characters and how it builds those characters throughout its pages just reminded me entirely of King’s vampire novel.
That doesn’t mean Devil Creek is not original, or that it can’t stand up on its own. It very much can, it’s a story concerning a death cult led by one of the creepiest characters I have ever read Jacob Masters. What I mean when I draw comparisons between these two books is that reading Devil’s Creek filled me with the same exhilarating excitement that I found in reading Salem’s Lot. I can’t praise it any higher.
I think that’s because within Salem’s Lot horrifying, gruesome pages are some of Stephen King’s most beautiful writing. The entire thing can be read and reread again to simply enjoy his words, especially when King is describing the changing seasons, he takes on a Ray Bradbury-like quality.
With the success of Carrie, King had the opportunity to show readers the full of extent of what he was capable of as a writer. Carrie is set in the fictional town of Chamberlain and while we learn a little about the town and its people it is nothing much in comparison with the in-depth experience of reading Salem’s Lot. Stephen King really creates an entire community in this book, utilizing his skills as a short story writer to flesh out that community by providing tiny stories about several of its inhabitants.
We get the story of an aged, crabby milkman, the man in charge of the town dump, a woman who runs the local boarding house, the town drunk or a couple having an affair to name a few. The thing is all these characters feature in the story in some significant way to show the horror as it progresses to take over the town. I found I enjoyed every moment spent in these characters’ lives, especially those of Eve and Weasel, an elderly on and off again couple.
The horror in this book comes in the form of Barlow and Straker, outsiders that move into Salem’s Lot’s most notorious residence the Marston House.
Barlow is a vampire and Straker is his familiar. As they arrive so does the novel’s protagonist Ben Mears, a writer who’s never had a home but for the few years, he spent in this town as a boy. Ben gets a lot of criticism as a character for being too noble and thus boring, but I never found that with him. I enjoyed every moment spent in his practical head as he meets his love interest Susan Norton and the rest of the cast. He is in some way’s King’s first attempt at making an interesting everyday man, something he would perfect with Johnny Smith a few books later.
While this is Stephen King’s first-time round at developing a lived-in community so is it his first attempt at building a team of characters intent on stopping a villain. You can see in these pages how King would go on the create such lengthy books as The Stand, which also features a huge cast of characters. However, those that feature in that book never feel as filled out or as enjoyable to read as those in this book. Matt Burke, a single elderly school teacher, stands out as the novel’s Van Helsing character, who is a personal favourite. Another is Jimmy Cody, the town’s local sawbones, whose end is heart-wrenching even after reading this book so many times. There’s also Father Callahan, who meets a fate worse than death, and Mark Petrie, probably the most resourceful of King’s child characters.
Barlow begins to infect the population of Salem’s Lot given the book a real sense of dread with each night that passes as the reader becomes aware that more people will have been converted into his soulless followers, especially in the book’s latter half.
The vampires in this book are clearly inspired by those in Dracula. Their abilities are more traditional than any modern incarnation, yet unlike those in Bram Stroker book where vampirism is a way for characters to fully unleash the pent-up emotions and desires, the vampires in King’s are more perverse. His vampires are ruthless, soulless leeches. They are an infection, something meant to be cleansed from your body. Combining this with King’s fantastic ability to create characters that the readers recognize and root for even if those characters are framed in the 1970s makes Salem’s Lot not just one of the best books in his catalogue but also the best book on vampires to ever be written.
Tier: Books That Shine
Rating: Five Stars
COMPANION STORY: DEVIL’S CREEK BY TODD KEISLING
Devil’s Creek is the modern-day equivalent of Salem’s Lot. There I typed it, it’s a hill I’m ready to die on. From its story about a small-town community in Kentucky scarred by its local legends to its diverse cast of characters and how it builds those characters throughout its pages just reminded me entirely of King’s vampire novel.
That doesn’t mean Devil Creek is not original, or that it can’t stand up on its own. It very much can, it’s a story concerning a death cult led by one of the creepiest characters I have ever read Jacob Masters. What I mean when I draw comparisons between these two books is that reading Devil’s Creek filled me with the same exhilarating excitement that I found in reading Salem’s Lot. I can’t praise it any higher.
January 23, 2022
Books That Shine: Carrie
Carrie is the first book published by Stephen King. Written at a time in his life were his family used what money he made from selling short stories to pay whatever unforeseen expenses happened to spring up, and it shows in the novel’s length and pace. This is one lean, mean story that despite its length packs one hell of a punch. It’s on record that King tossed this story in a wastebasket because it was going to be too long and because he felt he couldn’t do justice to a mostly female cast of characters experiencing high school. His wife, Tabby, saved it from being thrown out and offered to help him convey the female high school experience. Thank God she did. Carrie remains a hard-boiled horrifying read.
It also features plenty of action in the last forty or so pages in when the bullied Carrie unleashes her telekinetic powers on her hometown of Chamberlain. These pages are filled with gruesome scenes of death and destruction. However, these are not the most horrifying sequences in the book as even at a young age King placed character first above spectacle. As mentioned, Carrie is bullied but not just by her peers but at home as well by her religious zealot of a mother, one of King’s scariest creations to date.
Margaret White is a sad, oppressive figure who believes in her religious mania so devoutly that she lives in permanent fear of committing sin of any kind but mostly the sin of intercourse, of desire. This mania leads her to be physically and verbally abusive to Carrie with the aim to ‘save’ Carrie from committing such sins. For Carrie, this means that the one person she should have to fight her corner after a day of being bullied by her peers is instead a fearsome tyrant. One could also argue that if Margaret White was not religious Carrie would not be bullied by her classmates to the extent she is. Margaret is known throughout the local community for her beliefs and it’s when Carrie follows them at school that her peers begin to harass her. Carrie White would still be bullied simply because of some of the nasty characters such as Chris Hargenson in this story, but perhaps it would have been to a lesser degree.
THIS IS WHY CARRIE WORKS SO WELL AS A STORY AND WHY IT’S STILL SO IMPORTANT.
King’s early writing dealt with archetypal premises. Carrie is a story about the Pariah, the outsider. Salem’s Lot is a vampire story. The Shining is at its heart a ghost story. The Stand is about a plague. Carrie presents a world of consequences, in which those that are deemed Popular rule those that are considered Different and as a result are punished for doing so. It showcases this world boldly through the lens of one of the most taboo subjects that of a young woman entering into female maturity. I often wonder what young men and women of the same age as those featured in this book would think if they were taught this book in high school. Because the reader feels sympathy for Carrie White throughout the novel’s entirety even as she is destroying Chamberlain. In fact, one of the most horrifying lines in the whole book is when we see a sign spray painted on Carrie White’s home after the climax saying Carrie got what she deserved. It’s a devastating line because it shows that even after all the death and destruction the narrowed minded people of this book still haven’t thought of why Carrie did what she did. She’s still being bullied even in death. The fact that King achieves this level of feeling for a character who becomes the villain of the story is amazing.
Tier: Books That Shine
Rating: Five Stars
COMPANION STORY: TAKE YOUR TURN, TEDDY BY HALEY NEWLIN
Take Your Turn, Teddy was a novel that never leaves your head. Like Carrie Teddy is raised in an abusive home. Unlike Carrie, he doesn’t have any telekinetic powers to help him protect himself. That’s okay, though, because Teddy has a friend, a friend who can do things other people can’t.
Haley Newlin walks a fine line here that most horror stories that feature child protagonists seem incapable of having them sound and think like a child. Adult readers are able to read scenes understanding the devastation in them before Teddy has the chance to. Through this Haley shows the reader that it’s the human horrors that are truly the worst. Then just when you think you know where this story is going Haley hits you out of the leftfield, taking you on a journey you never expected to go.
Part supernatural story, part detective tale this is a must-read for horror fans.
It also features plenty of action in the last forty or so pages in when the bullied Carrie unleashes her telekinetic powers on her hometown of Chamberlain. These pages are filled with gruesome scenes of death and destruction. However, these are not the most horrifying sequences in the book as even at a young age King placed character first above spectacle. As mentioned, Carrie is bullied but not just by her peers but at home as well by her religious zealot of a mother, one of King’s scariest creations to date.
Margaret White is a sad, oppressive figure who believes in her religious mania so devoutly that she lives in permanent fear of committing sin of any kind but mostly the sin of intercourse, of desire. This mania leads her to be physically and verbally abusive to Carrie with the aim to ‘save’ Carrie from committing such sins. For Carrie, this means that the one person she should have to fight her corner after a day of being bullied by her peers is instead a fearsome tyrant. One could also argue that if Margaret White was not religious Carrie would not be bullied by her classmates to the extent she is. Margaret is known throughout the local community for her beliefs and it’s when Carrie follows them at school that her peers begin to harass her. Carrie White would still be bullied simply because of some of the nasty characters such as Chris Hargenson in this story, but perhaps it would have been to a lesser degree.
THIS IS WHY CARRIE WORKS SO WELL AS A STORY AND WHY IT’S STILL SO IMPORTANT.
King’s early writing dealt with archetypal premises. Carrie is a story about the Pariah, the outsider. Salem’s Lot is a vampire story. The Shining is at its heart a ghost story. The Stand is about a plague. Carrie presents a world of consequences, in which those that are deemed Popular rule those that are considered Different and as a result are punished for doing so. It showcases this world boldly through the lens of one of the most taboo subjects that of a young woman entering into female maturity. I often wonder what young men and women of the same age as those featured in this book would think if they were taught this book in high school. Because the reader feels sympathy for Carrie White throughout the novel’s entirety even as she is destroying Chamberlain. In fact, one of the most horrifying lines in the whole book is when we see a sign spray painted on Carrie White’s home after the climax saying Carrie got what she deserved. It’s a devastating line because it shows that even after all the death and destruction the narrowed minded people of this book still haven’t thought of why Carrie did what she did. She’s still being bullied even in death. The fact that King achieves this level of feeling for a character who becomes the villain of the story is amazing.
Tier: Books That Shine
Rating: Five Stars
COMPANION STORY: TAKE YOUR TURN, TEDDY BY HALEY NEWLIN
Take Your Turn, Teddy was a novel that never leaves your head. Like Carrie Teddy is raised in an abusive home. Unlike Carrie, he doesn’t have any telekinetic powers to help him protect himself. That’s okay, though, because Teddy has a friend, a friend who can do things other people can’t.
Haley Newlin walks a fine line here that most horror stories that feature child protagonists seem incapable of having them sound and think like a child. Adult readers are able to read scenes understanding the devastation in them before Teddy has the chance to. Through this Haley shows the reader that it’s the human horrors that are truly the worst. Then just when you think you know where this story is going Haley hits you out of the leftfield, taking you on a journey you never expected to go.
Part supernatural story, part detective tale this is a must-read for horror fans.
Introduction to Books That Shine: A Stephen King Review Series
My name is Jamie Stewart, I am a horror author of such works as I Hear the Clattering of The Keys (And Other Fever Dreams) and Mr. Jones. But today I’m not writing about myself. No, I’m indulging in another favourite hobby of mine, writing about the works of others, which is a great way to support them. I love supporting other authors through reviews, posts and discussions. I also love Stephen King, something you can read about in my essay Room 217 (Why I Never Left) available here or on the Horror Oasis website.
For the last two years, I have been rereading Stephen King’s work chronologically following a night in the Stanley Hotel reading The Shining.
For those that may not know The Stanley is where King got the idea for the novel. What turned into a quest to enjoy the man’s work and discover how his writing has changed over the years became an opportunity to review, rate and rank them all. I want to take that one step further with this ongoing (hopefully) exercise by offering a suggestion of modern or lesser-known horror that would make a good companion with each of his books. Thus, the Books That Shine Series was born. I will urge those that read this to visit Horror Oasis’s website where each of these reviews will be published first, alongside some amazing graphics created by the website’s owner.
As previously mentioned, I will also be ranking each book into a four-tiered system, which are as follows:
> Books That Shine
> Books That Surprise
> Books That Try, Sometimes Too Hard
> Headache Books.
If you stick around in the next few months, you’ll begin to understand how I came upon the name of each. The overall aim once I’ve finished with every last King book is to release the entire best to least list. As with everything I intend to do here this is entirely personal, what I like you may not and vice versa. That being said I hope this can encourage discussions on the man’s work as well as offers readers books by authors they may not know about yet.
Without further ado let’s start at the beginning with Carrie.
For the last two years, I have been rereading Stephen King’s work chronologically following a night in the Stanley Hotel reading The Shining.
For those that may not know The Stanley is where King got the idea for the novel. What turned into a quest to enjoy the man’s work and discover how his writing has changed over the years became an opportunity to review, rate and rank them all. I want to take that one step further with this ongoing (hopefully) exercise by offering a suggestion of modern or lesser-known horror that would make a good companion with each of his books. Thus, the Books That Shine Series was born. I will urge those that read this to visit Horror Oasis’s website where each of these reviews will be published first, alongside some amazing graphics created by the website’s owner.
As previously mentioned, I will also be ranking each book into a four-tiered system, which are as follows:
> Books That Shine
> Books That Surprise
> Books That Try, Sometimes Too Hard
> Headache Books.
If you stick around in the next few months, you’ll begin to understand how I came upon the name of each. The overall aim once I’ve finished with every last King book is to release the entire best to least list. As with everything I intend to do here this is entirely personal, what I like you may not and vice versa. That being said I hope this can encourage discussions on the man’s work as well as offers readers books by authors they may not know about yet.
Without further ado let’s start at the beginning with Carrie.
January 22, 2022
Room 217: Why I Never Left
I’m a horror guy. I don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s the same way certain people favour savoury or sweet, The Beatles or The Stones. They really don’t know why they prefer those things they just do. It’s either a pre-built thing or an accumulation of a thousand different forces and suggestions from an earlier age. But I’m not writing this to talk about why people like horror. In truth I don’t know why I am writing this or if anyone will be interested in reading it, which is usually how all writing starts. I’m just stating we don’t really have any control over our particular tastes.
Even when I was a young kid I gravitated towards the spooky side of things. Take the holidays of Christmas and Halloween, which stand side by side at the end of the year. Like any kid I loved Christmas, who doesn’t love presents, but Halloween fired my imagination like no other holiday could.
My parents were readers and I suppose that helped as they were keen on encouraging the hobby onto me. I think they just wanted something that would shut me up and calm me down for a few moments, and I don’t blame them. I was a limitless ball of energy as a kid, never content to sit still for long, always racing around imagining this or that. One second I was Batman. The next I was Alan Grant from Jurassic Park. That’s tough for any parent to keep up with, especially after a 12-hour day at work.
But like I said I gravitated to horror from an early age, not just in the pop culture I liked to consume but in my own thoughts. Things like vampires, ghosts, werewolves and zombies were never far from my daydreams. And perhaps like Danny Torrence’s Shining those thoughts worked like a GPS for the type of material that a kid like me would enjoy. I do believe that the right story will find the right person; the person that it is going to mean the most to, even to the point that it changes them in some fundamental way.
I found R.L Stine’s Goosebump series through a friend at the age of nine. Or did they find me? I don’t honestly know, but like I said, if you’re pre-disposed to like a particular thing it’s almost supernatural in how that thing finds you and sets a fire in you. When I discovered the Goosebumps books I was already writing, it was something I discovered in primary school and as my head was already filled with all things monster, I spilled it into countless notebooks and any spare pages left around.
In reading the Goosebumps series I found a direction for my writing. You see before then everything I wrote was a recreation of ideas I’d seen in movies or video games. Ideas that featured main characters that were always adults and oddly American. Goosebumps was about kids, kids that talked and thought like kids while dealing with vampires and mummies and living dolls. It was revelation to me. You mean I could write a story where my friends and I fought the zombies from Night of The Living Dead. That’s when my writing changed from writing about things, I’d seen other people do in movies to writing about my friends.
As much as I loved those Goosebumps books, I could never finish one completely. Nor could I get past four chapters in Harry Potter, or His Dark Materials, or anything else. I was still that wound up ball of energy that couldn’t sit still for very long, which meant I never read a book all the way through even though I loved it. It was the same with my own stories. I never finished them. I once sold a 45-page zombie epic to a kid who was leaving school for a five pounds (my first in the business) at eleven. What I never told him on the day that he was leaving was that it wasn’t complete. In fact, the story stopped mid-sentence. If you think I felt bad about this, I didn’t and still don’t. It’s the monster in me.
Yet, as I went from a child into my pre-teens, continuing to write horror as I did, I think it was clear to my parents I was searching for something. And perhaps that something was the joy of reading. Despite my struggles to read a book in its entirety, I still tried. That’s when my Dad suggested Stephen King. He had read his books around the age of thirteen, along with James Herbert’s, and thought they would appeal to me based on what I liked to write. He wasn’t wrong, and rarely is when it comes to recommending books, music or film.
What made me consider his suggestion even more was I had seen an entire shelf in the local bookstore stacked with dozens of books, all with the word KING written in gold on them. I think I might have even pulled one out, attracted by eerie yet captivating covers. (SEE! THE SHIT WE LIKE FINDS US). But where do you start with Stephen King. This was in 2003, which meant he had a back catalogue of over forty books. So, I did what any kid would do. I asked my Dad, the lexicon of all things pop culture in my life, at least back then. He was the internet before I knew the internet existed. When I did learn about, I thought it was only for pornography, sixteen years later I was still kind of right. He rhythm off a few he could remember Salem’s Lot, The Stand, It and The Shining. That last title stuck out, I had heard it before somewhere. There was a movie called The Shining, something the kids in the playground said was the scariest horror movie of all time, and if they said it that meant it was world famous. I hadn’t seen it yet, again didn’t know the internet existed and if I did it wasn’t the place to watch movies on.
It was the summer of 2003, I had money saved from cutting grass so rather than spend it on sweets and movie tickets I walked down to my local bookstore and bought The Shining. And while it was a hot summer, in which, my parents took us to the coast for two weeks I spent it with the Torrance’s, locked away inside The Overlook Hotel as the snow piled higher and higher outside, entrapping us inside a thing of nightmares.
Danny Torrence was my best friend that summer, even though he was much younger. Like the kids in the Goosebumps books Danny acted, talked and thought like a kid, though having reread it recently I realise he reads like a very intelligent kid, perhaps too much so. But wait he couldn’t single handedly defeat the haunted hotel, even with his psychic powers. He struggled because of his age to understand and articulate things to his parents that were beyond him. And because of his age he was disregarded by his parents and most adults until it’s too late, despite the fact that he knows more than anyone else. I empathised with him, with his frustrations and his love for his parents. What the hell am I reading?
Jack Torrence was the bad guy, an alcoholic, abuser who becomes possessed by the Hotel. But he loved his wife and child. He was flawed and struggling with those flaws to better himself as well as trying to provide for his family. I liked him … but he was the bad guy. What the hell am I reading?
Wendy Torrence was a mother and wife wound to breaking point with worry. She was a woman with her own faults and past. She loved her husband and son. She also loved playing with her son, spending time with her husband, she even loved having sex with him. What the hell am I reading?
And then there was the Overlook itself. I had read haunted hotel/house stories before, even written a few but not like this. The Overlook enforced a slow descent into madness, feeding off of the Torrence’s fears and Danny’s shine, as the weather isolated them further and further. Yes, there were ghosts. The Woman in 217 being the one most people know, but also hedge animals, reanimated wasps, elevators that move in the night filled with confetti and nothing else, blood soaked walls, fire hoses that might be snakes and ghosts from every decade of the hotels existence. These weren’t the blood and guts type of monsters that jump out to feast themselves upon you. These were monsters that wanted to break apart the minds of the novels three characters piece by piece then amalgamate them with the hotels’ other captured spirits. This novel wasn’t just horror, but art of the finest kind. For days after I carried the finished book around with me as if it held some talismanic value. You see I was confused by what I had-just read. I had simply wanted to be entertained, which, I was but I was also challenged in my believes of what is good and what is evil. I also cared about the Torrence’s, enough that Jack Torrence’s final sacrifice saddened me, a feeling that stayed for days. It was a reading experience unlike any other I had had until that point. And I wanted more of it, not just to read. I wanted to write something like this.
I’ve had that experience many times again from novels in multiple different genres but the horror genre is one I always return to. Despite, the gruesome things that sometimes swim in the genre it’s waters have always been the most sweet and satisfying to me. But that’s to be explored another time.
I went back to the bookstore and bought Carrie then Salem’s Lot. When I bought The Stand, unafraid by its 1000 something pages, I realised I had finally become a reader. As well as that I was reading an author whose work was an example of what can be achieved in the telling of a story. Stories were no longer something that were just fun, they held truth as well.
In reading The Shining, in walking into Room 217, I was introduced to the power that the horror story can have. Instead of running, screaming from that room I plunked myself down in a chair and took notes. There’s plenty more in the genre over than King such as Shirley Jackson, Clive Barker, Jack Ketchum to name a few. All with their own unique stories, their truth’s to tell. Whether these stories found me or I found them doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we met because in that meeting my life changed. It began with my writing, of wanting not to recreate stories I liked but tell my own stories while reaching that higher level that The Shining achieved. As my writing changed, my properties in life changed. I had a focus that I never known. I was no longer a ball of energy bouncing randomly from idea to idea but dedicated to writing my own stories that could sit beside those that are the masters of the genre. I wanted to learn, to finish the stories I started and do better next time. I entered into Room 217 at thirteen years old, I haven’t left since.
Even when I was a young kid I gravitated towards the spooky side of things. Take the holidays of Christmas and Halloween, which stand side by side at the end of the year. Like any kid I loved Christmas, who doesn’t love presents, but Halloween fired my imagination like no other holiday could.
My parents were readers and I suppose that helped as they were keen on encouraging the hobby onto me. I think they just wanted something that would shut me up and calm me down for a few moments, and I don’t blame them. I was a limitless ball of energy as a kid, never content to sit still for long, always racing around imagining this or that. One second I was Batman. The next I was Alan Grant from Jurassic Park. That’s tough for any parent to keep up with, especially after a 12-hour day at work.
But like I said I gravitated to horror from an early age, not just in the pop culture I liked to consume but in my own thoughts. Things like vampires, ghosts, werewolves and zombies were never far from my daydreams. And perhaps like Danny Torrence’s Shining those thoughts worked like a GPS for the type of material that a kid like me would enjoy. I do believe that the right story will find the right person; the person that it is going to mean the most to, even to the point that it changes them in some fundamental way.
I found R.L Stine’s Goosebump series through a friend at the age of nine. Or did they find me? I don’t honestly know, but like I said, if you’re pre-disposed to like a particular thing it’s almost supernatural in how that thing finds you and sets a fire in you. When I discovered the Goosebumps books I was already writing, it was something I discovered in primary school and as my head was already filled with all things monster, I spilled it into countless notebooks and any spare pages left around.
In reading the Goosebumps series I found a direction for my writing. You see before then everything I wrote was a recreation of ideas I’d seen in movies or video games. Ideas that featured main characters that were always adults and oddly American. Goosebumps was about kids, kids that talked and thought like kids while dealing with vampires and mummies and living dolls. It was revelation to me. You mean I could write a story where my friends and I fought the zombies from Night of The Living Dead. That’s when my writing changed from writing about things, I’d seen other people do in movies to writing about my friends.
As much as I loved those Goosebumps books, I could never finish one completely. Nor could I get past four chapters in Harry Potter, or His Dark Materials, or anything else. I was still that wound up ball of energy that couldn’t sit still for very long, which meant I never read a book all the way through even though I loved it. It was the same with my own stories. I never finished them. I once sold a 45-page zombie epic to a kid who was leaving school for a five pounds (my first in the business) at eleven. What I never told him on the day that he was leaving was that it wasn’t complete. In fact, the story stopped mid-sentence. If you think I felt bad about this, I didn’t and still don’t. It’s the monster in me.
Yet, as I went from a child into my pre-teens, continuing to write horror as I did, I think it was clear to my parents I was searching for something. And perhaps that something was the joy of reading. Despite my struggles to read a book in its entirety, I still tried. That’s when my Dad suggested Stephen King. He had read his books around the age of thirteen, along with James Herbert’s, and thought they would appeal to me based on what I liked to write. He wasn’t wrong, and rarely is when it comes to recommending books, music or film.
What made me consider his suggestion even more was I had seen an entire shelf in the local bookstore stacked with dozens of books, all with the word KING written in gold on them. I think I might have even pulled one out, attracted by eerie yet captivating covers. (SEE! THE SHIT WE LIKE FINDS US). But where do you start with Stephen King. This was in 2003, which meant he had a back catalogue of over forty books. So, I did what any kid would do. I asked my Dad, the lexicon of all things pop culture in my life, at least back then. He was the internet before I knew the internet existed. When I did learn about, I thought it was only for pornography, sixteen years later I was still kind of right. He rhythm off a few he could remember Salem’s Lot, The Stand, It and The Shining. That last title stuck out, I had heard it before somewhere. There was a movie called The Shining, something the kids in the playground said was the scariest horror movie of all time, and if they said it that meant it was world famous. I hadn’t seen it yet, again didn’t know the internet existed and if I did it wasn’t the place to watch movies on.
It was the summer of 2003, I had money saved from cutting grass so rather than spend it on sweets and movie tickets I walked down to my local bookstore and bought The Shining. And while it was a hot summer, in which, my parents took us to the coast for two weeks I spent it with the Torrance’s, locked away inside The Overlook Hotel as the snow piled higher and higher outside, entrapping us inside a thing of nightmares.
Danny Torrence was my best friend that summer, even though he was much younger. Like the kids in the Goosebumps books Danny acted, talked and thought like a kid, though having reread it recently I realise he reads like a very intelligent kid, perhaps too much so. But wait he couldn’t single handedly defeat the haunted hotel, even with his psychic powers. He struggled because of his age to understand and articulate things to his parents that were beyond him. And because of his age he was disregarded by his parents and most adults until it’s too late, despite the fact that he knows more than anyone else. I empathised with him, with his frustrations and his love for his parents. What the hell am I reading?
Jack Torrence was the bad guy, an alcoholic, abuser who becomes possessed by the Hotel. But he loved his wife and child. He was flawed and struggling with those flaws to better himself as well as trying to provide for his family. I liked him … but he was the bad guy. What the hell am I reading?
Wendy Torrence was a mother and wife wound to breaking point with worry. She was a woman with her own faults and past. She loved her husband and son. She also loved playing with her son, spending time with her husband, she even loved having sex with him. What the hell am I reading?
And then there was the Overlook itself. I had read haunted hotel/house stories before, even written a few but not like this. The Overlook enforced a slow descent into madness, feeding off of the Torrence’s fears and Danny’s shine, as the weather isolated them further and further. Yes, there were ghosts. The Woman in 217 being the one most people know, but also hedge animals, reanimated wasps, elevators that move in the night filled with confetti and nothing else, blood soaked walls, fire hoses that might be snakes and ghosts from every decade of the hotels existence. These weren’t the blood and guts type of monsters that jump out to feast themselves upon you. These were monsters that wanted to break apart the minds of the novels three characters piece by piece then amalgamate them with the hotels’ other captured spirits. This novel wasn’t just horror, but art of the finest kind. For days after I carried the finished book around with me as if it held some talismanic value. You see I was confused by what I had-just read. I had simply wanted to be entertained, which, I was but I was also challenged in my believes of what is good and what is evil. I also cared about the Torrence’s, enough that Jack Torrence’s final sacrifice saddened me, a feeling that stayed for days. It was a reading experience unlike any other I had had until that point. And I wanted more of it, not just to read. I wanted to write something like this.
I’ve had that experience many times again from novels in multiple different genres but the horror genre is one I always return to. Despite, the gruesome things that sometimes swim in the genre it’s waters have always been the most sweet and satisfying to me. But that’s to be explored another time.
I went back to the bookstore and bought Carrie then Salem’s Lot. When I bought The Stand, unafraid by its 1000 something pages, I realised I had finally become a reader. As well as that I was reading an author whose work was an example of what can be achieved in the telling of a story. Stories were no longer something that were just fun, they held truth as well.
In reading The Shining, in walking into Room 217, I was introduced to the power that the horror story can have. Instead of running, screaming from that room I plunked myself down in a chair and took notes. There’s plenty more in the genre over than King such as Shirley Jackson, Clive Barker, Jack Ketchum to name a few. All with their own unique stories, their truth’s to tell. Whether these stories found me or I found them doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we met because in that meeting my life changed. It began with my writing, of wanting not to recreate stories I liked but tell my own stories while reaching that higher level that The Shining achieved. As my writing changed, my properties in life changed. I had a focus that I never known. I was no longer a ball of energy bouncing randomly from idea to idea but dedicated to writing my own stories that could sit beside those that are the masters of the genre. I wanted to learn, to finish the stories I started and do better next time. I entered into Room 217 at thirteen years old, I haven’t left since.
April 11, 2020
Do You Love?
A Ranking of the Skeleton Crew Collection
So I decided this year to reread everything written by Stephen King in chronologically order. Four months in and I’ve just finished Skeleton Crew, and like anyone that’s just read a collection of stories I started to think about, which stories I liked best and, which I liked the least. Being a fan of making lists I decided to rank them. Then I went one step further and decided to post that ranking here on my Goodreads page with the intention of discovery what other people thought about these stories. So feel free to get in touch with your own personal ranking of Skeleton Crew.
1. The Mist
2. The Raft
3. Survivor Type
4. Word Processor of the Gods
5. Gramma
6. Nona
7. Morning Delivery (Milkman 1)
8. Beachworld
9. The Jaunt
10. The Monkey
11. The Reaper’s Image
12. Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut
13. Uncle Otto’s Truck
14. Here There Be Tygers
15. The Balld of the Flexible Bullet
16. The Reach
17. The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands
18. The Wedding Gig
19. Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman 2)
20. Cain Rose Up
I didn’t include the two poems that are part of this collection but if anyone who wants to do there own list they can do so. If you liked to know what I thought of these stories then check out my review on the Goodreads.
So I decided this year to reread everything written by Stephen King in chronologically order. Four months in and I’ve just finished Skeleton Crew, and like anyone that’s just read a collection of stories I started to think about, which stories I liked best and, which I liked the least. Being a fan of making lists I decided to rank them. Then I went one step further and decided to post that ranking here on my Goodreads page with the intention of discovery what other people thought about these stories. So feel free to get in touch with your own personal ranking of Skeleton Crew.
1. The Mist
2. The Raft
3. Survivor Type
4. Word Processor of the Gods
5. Gramma
6. Nona
7. Morning Delivery (Milkman 1)
8. Beachworld
9. The Jaunt
10. The Monkey
11. The Reaper’s Image
12. Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut
13. Uncle Otto’s Truck
14. Here There Be Tygers
15. The Balld of the Flexible Bullet
16. The Reach
17. The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands
18. The Wedding Gig
19. Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman 2)
20. Cain Rose Up
I didn’t include the two poems that are part of this collection but if anyone who wants to do there own list they can do so. If you liked to know what I thought of these stories then check out my review on the Goodreads.
